[Stoves] Fw: Small metal grate makes big impact on environment, health | Iowa Now

[Nikhil Desai]

Cecil:

To me, this seems like metal grates in any of a number of wood and charcoal
stoves I had seen in Gujarat villages and cities back 55-60 years ago.

Around 1990, it became clear to me it is critical to define the context and
observe all types of stoves all around over a year. The type, location,
size of stoves varies by community and peer habits. And their role and
usage change along with income, household size, and building new homes.

One has to be able to tell a story, not just publish a paper reciting
platitudes and putting forth no actionable agenda.

The real lesson here is that stove experts know next to nothing about
cooking and cooks except for some "sample" households, if that.

I remember discussions on charcoal stoves - Jiko and its adapted versions.
It seemed to me that practically all issues of size, shape, materials, air
flow, ventilation, fire power had been addressed by artisanal charcoal
stove makers in my city from around 1930 onwards. (That was my mother's
birth, and what I gathered from her and grandmothers goes back to that
period, when charcoal had spread pretty uniformly in my village. Kerosene
lighting started around then but was restricted use.)

I have no idea if these artisans have ever been interviewed. What Uni of
Iowa seem to have discovered was probably in use in my village and city by
1950/55. How such things spread was probably remoteness or cost of fuel, as
well as desire to save time.

There is a lot out there to observe and learn from. And to learn how to
make a woman happy, a girl look forward to no drudgery. Even relatively
poor (earnings of $200-250 a month) people send their daughters to private
schools at $200 a year (minimum). Do you think those parents would fork out
$200 for a stove they know their daughter will probably not use?

Nikhil

------------------------
Nikhil Desai
(India +91)909 995 2080
*Skype: nikhildesai888*

On Mon, Apr 10, 2017 at 12:16 AM, <cec1863 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Here is my response to Nikhil post about a stove insert costing $1 that
> reduces fuel consumption by +/- 60% and fits inside traditional clay stoves
> and/or 3 stone fires.
>
> ‎A complete description of the metal insert is provided in the November
> issue of Solutions from the Un of Iowa.
>
> I am interested to hear about other examples of incrementally improved
> traditional stoves like the Keren traditional stove which Crispin and GERES
> have developed in Java which embodies 4 different innovations:
>
>    1. a metal or ceramic grate to insure primary air flow from beneath
>    the burning wood,
>    2. relocation of multiple air holes to one air hole opposite the mouth
>    of the stove,
>    3. much lower and flatter pot rests to reduce excess air flow through
>    the combustion chamber,
>    4. Introduction of an ignition tube, pipe or cone to reduce emissions
>    and accelerate the lighting of fires.
>
> My personal interest is to learn about other examples where traditional
> stoves have been technically tweaked at very low costs which are affordable
> by most householders. As a result of the higher performance of a radically
> improved traditional stove from the perspective of stove users and buyers,
> the benefit delivered simply over power  the natural of the stove
> users/buyer's resistance to change and rapidly result in spontaneous
> dissemination and widespread acceptance by stove users with little or no
> subsidy from  government programs or inducement by stove promoting and
> disseminating NGO's.
>
> To some extent that is the story of the Kenyan Ceramic (lined) Jiko (CKJ)
> and now it seems Crispin is tweaking the traditional stove in villages in
> impoverished rural ‎communities in Kyrgyzstan to create stoves which are
> locally produced by metal workers that perform so well according to local
> standards that these radically higher performance stoves are now demanded
> by the rural buyers. The cooks and operators are demanding that the stove
> makers produce these outwardly traditional looking stoves that
>
>    1. save so much coal,
>    2. do not leak smoke into rhe houses, and
>    3. only have to be fueled two times in 24 hours.
>
> ‎I am pretty sure there are similar success stories out there documenting
> other instances of spontaneous stove technology transfer and almost instant
> "instituitionalization" of affordable, unsubsidized, radically higher
> performance locally produced stoves??
>
> Increase my amazement with other stories about the nearly spontaneous
> acceptance of radically improved traditional stoves that happens inside the
> context of the traditional stove system and culture.
>
> Cecil the Cook
>
> Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone
>
> Dear Nikhil et al,
>
> Nikhil, thank you for this connection to a stove aficionado at Iowa State
> Un.
>
> Can we see what this insert looks like? Have you seen it? Is his claim of
> 60% savings possible? I think such savings are possible. What did we and
> GERES get with the improved Karen stove in Indonesia?
>
> As a development principle I support the idea of an in situ approach to
> stove technology innovation that uses the traditional stove as a starting
> point and then gradually introduces small changes in its design based on
> real stove science.
>
> I also agree with a self help approach that sees technology change as an
> opportunity for indigenous stove makers to learn how to fabricate better
> performing stoves and also to learn about and internalize the scientific
> reasons - translated into the ethnoscience of the local culture - which
> makes sense of why and how these small changes radically improve the
> performance of culturally and environmentally situated "old faithful"
> traditional stoves
>
> I realize that technology mostly changes slowly by making small
> incremental i‎mprovements. But occasionally it changes drastically because
> of the arrival of totally new technologies that are so powerfully improved
> that the new technos rapidly replaces the traditional technos. Many social,
> economic, political, cultural, and environmental fasctors shape the process
> by which both big and little changes in technology take place.
>
> My optimization strategy is to figure out what are the biggest
> progressive, easily affordable, and sustainable changes in stove technos
> ‎that a stove-operator-fuel system change program can introduce into a
> particular stove using community with the smallest investment of scarce
> resources for the purpose of promoting the greatest amount of change
> (improvement) in the efficiency and emission performance of an established
> traditional stove-fuel-cuisine-operator-fabricator-seller system's.
>
> Therefore, I am interested to see if the combustion enhancing metal grate
> insert is spontaneously and rapidly adopted by the stove using community
> for which it was developed and to which it was offered as a stand alone
> improvement. If the stove technos innovation is right and it manages - for
> the right price or additional self help labour cost - to optimize enough of
> t‎he locally important and culturally recognized stove performance
> parameters the in my experience such a stove innovation should
> spontaneously spread like wildfire!
>
> It occurs to me that we can learn a lot if we look around the world of
> "traditional" stoves ‎to find areas and communities where different types
> of stove technology innovations - once introduced - have spontaneously and
> rapidly spread with little or no outside agent promoting or subsidizing
> their adoption and spread. What are the "necessary and sufficient"
> conditions required to trigger a rapid pocess of spontaneous adoption of a
> range of simple to more complex innovstions in stove technos?
>
> Here is Nikhil's link to an intervention reaching 2000 households in
> village India with locally fabricated metal grates inserted into otherwise
> unchanged traditional mud stoves. Perhaps we should encourage more of these
> types of experiments and search for additional examples of spontaneous and
> rapid dissemination of stove inovations around the world??
>
> https://now.uiowa.edu/2015/12/small-metal-grate-makes-big-
> impact-environment-health
>
> In search and service,
> Cecil
> Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone.
>
>
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